ACAS has recently published a lengthy
research paper on the effect of its conciliation processes in employment tribunal
claims.
Our policies cover the costs of legal representation for claimants and
employers throughout the early conciliation process and beyond. We have looked
in some detail at the research and while we think it's really worthwhile to
share the findings with you, due to the volume of information, we are going to
divide our blog into two posts. In the first post below we outline the
background to the research and provide details of the profile of claimants.
ACAS
Research – Part 1
Background
Since July
2013, claimants who make a new Employment Tribunal (ET) claim have been
required to pay a fee. The amount of the fee varies depending on the type of
claim. ET claim volumes fell dramatically following the introduction of fees –
steeply at first, but with rate of decline starting to slow thereafter and
latterly stabilising. For the financial year 2015/16 there has been a levelling
out in the number of individual claims. In April to June 2015 there was an
uplift of 19% from the previous year; July to September saw an uplift of 4% and
October to December less than 1%.
From May 2014, the
Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 requires that employees intending to
lodge an ET claim must contact Acas first, to see if the dispute could be
resolved through ‘Early Conciliation’ (EC) which is facilitated by Acas.
For cases
that are not resolved through EC that continue on the path to an Employment
Tribunal, Acas conciliation is again offered in what is now known as post-ET1
conciliation (formerly known as Individual Conciliation (IC)).
Profile of
claimants participating in the Survey
Assuming the claimants participating in the Survey are
representative, this provided some interesting figures regarding the sort of
individuals and companies most likely to find themselves involved in an
Employment tribunal:
- 79% worked full-time for the employer they made their claim
against
- 80% of claimants had worked for their employer for at least one
year or more, with 22% having worked for more than 10 years.
- In comparison to the working population, claimants are less
likely to be from professional occupations, and more likely to be from
associate professional and technical occupations.
- 19% were a member of a Trade Union.
- 57% of claimants were male, slightly higher than the
proportion of men in the working population (53%).
- 81% of claimants were over 35, compared with 63% of the working
population.
- 28% of claimants reported having a long-term illness, health
problem or disability, slightly higher than the equivalent figure for the
working population (21%),
- A Representative is used by 78% of claimants at the ET1 stage, but
only 24% at the EC stage. The ET1 stage tending to have a far higher %
of ‘formal’ representatives (including solicitors, barristers and
lawyers, as well as Trade Union and working representatives) as opposed to friends,
neighbours or family members.
- 66% of claimants (and their representatives) reported that EC had
previously taken place in their case prior to the submission of the ET claim.
- 83% of employers interviewed operated within the private sector,
and 37 per cent operated in large organisations (with 250 or more employees).
67% had an internal Human Resources (HR) department, 36% had an internal legal
department, 28% were members of an employer’s or trade association. (Any
organisation of any size is therefore susceptible to Employment situations. All businesses
remain vulnerable even if they have their own HR or legal resources).
The ACAS
research paper reports the findings of an evaluation of the post-ET1
conciliation offer.
Watch out
for Part 2 of this blog in which we tell you more about how businesses and
claimants felt about early conciliation and the outcomes.
